


Hyperborean

by takeawalkwithme



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Character Study, Cold, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:21:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takeawalkwithme/pseuds/takeawalkwithme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt fill:</p><p>When he's not flying, if thres no van work. Martin sits in bed, covers wrapped around him.<br/>He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he doesn't drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyperborean

**Author's Note:**

> following a prompt on the cabin pressure meme
> 
> http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/6625.html?thread=11316449#cmt11316449
> 
> un-beta', un-brit-picked

It had always been worst in the winters. Back then when he had been a child, summers had been easy, all sunshine and model aeroplanes and laughter with his siblings. The wind in the willows, growing up in the English countryside, a real proper childhood. 

Come November, December the latest, inevitably, like the strangest, most fragile clockwork in the world, his mother would start caring less.  
The week after that, the temperatures would start dropping below zero. He never told anyone that the Crieff children preferred Easter over Christmas because it meant that Mummy had weathered out another cold season.

The first year after his Dad died, Martin almost decided to stay in his attic over Christmas, he simply couldn't bear listening to Caitlin's and Simon's stories about husbands and wives and children and the stone wall of Mummy's silent despair. But he was not a bad child, or a bad person, for that matter; if it meant that his mother survived another winter, he would gladly listen to all the uplifting, heartwarming displays of domesticity in the world.

They grew older and more apart. First the others stopped attending Boxing Day festivities, then they only came for that. But not Martin, no. Martin usually spent all of the quiet season between holidays in Wokingham, cursing the gods for letting this happen to his mother. 

The third of November in the winter after he turned 30, Martin came home, sat down on his bed and, for the first time in his life, knew what it felt like. The depression didn't come instantly, suddenly, overwhelming and engulfing him until the only thing he felt was blank, cold despair. No, it crept into his life slowly, peeling away all the small, arthurean joys in his life, only leaving the bleak, bleached skeleton of failure. And then despair.

He was 30, and he hadn't accomplished anything with his life. He had three days off from his hobby, which he should be filling with proper work to pay the bills, but he hadn't had a job in weeks. His meagre savings had long been eaten away, quite literally, and one of the students had just told him that if he couldn't pay his electricity bills, he should bloody well not turn on the heating.

So he sat down on his bed, still in the uniform that was both his biggest treasure and symbol of all his failings and misgivings, and waited. 

After fifteen minutes, his hands and feet began to feel cold, so he wrapped his duvet around him, but it didn't offer him a lot of comfort.

As the night progressed, it fractually grew colder in his attic room; the insulation wasn't very good. The students usually didn't make a fuss about it, they only stayed there for three years. He had been there for eight now.

Eight years of yearning, whether it was for his dream career or for simple human contact, and both was denied to him. He used to watch TV when he was younger, but eventually all movies in the world orbited around money or love, neither of which he could relate to. So he'd invested himself even more in aviation, trying to find anything on the matter that existed and then some. But lately, even that couldn't raise his spirits anymore.

At three am, his lips turned blue and his fingers under the cover were white. A hot shower would help that, but no electricity bill also meant no hot showers. Apart from that, he would have to get up for that and he simply didn't have the energy.

Martin's stomach rumbled, but he didn't really feel hungry. Either way, he didn't have money to buy food. He'd survive until the next flight, that much was sure. If he showed up for that flight. He couldn't really imagine getting up now. Every tiny movement he made now would surely disintegrate his very being. 

Half four and he didn't mind the cold anymore. If anything, it was a dull, constant reminder he was still there.


End file.
